Rockburn is out of the Centaine mare Wee Tipple and is owned by his Masterton breeders Pat and Rosie Laffey, along with several other members of their family.
John Bary and his wife Laura, along with their two children Kobe and Fleur, have taken up a racing share in the gelding who has now had two starts for a debut third over 1300m at Hastings on November 13 and a dominant 1-1/4 length victory over 1400m there last week.
It is the first time the Bary siblings have been involved in racing ownership.
Sanders said Rockburn is now likely to be stepped up again in distance to a Rating 65 race over 1600m at Hastings on New Year’s Eve before hopefully going on to better things.
“I think John wants to aim him towards the Waikato Guineas in February and then he has the Derby in mind,” Sanders said.
The Group 2 $120,000 Waikato Guineas (2000m) will be run at Te Rapa on February 1 with the $1m New Zealand Derby (2400m) run on the same track on March 4.
“We think the further he goes the better he’ll go,” Sanders added.
Jonathan Riddell steered Rockburn to victory at Hastings last week and produced a 10 out of 10 ride. He settled the big gelding midfield and one-off the running rail and had him travelling easily just in behind the leading division coming to the home turn.
Once in the straight Riddell angled Rockburn to the centre of the track and the big horse finished strongly for a comfortable win over the fast-finishing Mr Bully Tee, who got up to nose out Asterial for second.
The run by Mr Bully Tee, prepared by the Hastings combination of Mick Brown and Sue Thompson, was particularly eye-catching as the Complacent 3-year-old came from a clear last on the home turn and powered home down the outside.
Rockburn’s dam Wee Tipple was the winner of three races and has been a prolific producer of race winners.
John Bary trained a half-sister to him called Mae West, who won five races, while a full brother called Who Dares Wins was the winner of 10 races in the South Island and another half-brother called Banrock won four.
Mae West is now at stud in Australia where she has left a recent Listed race winner.
Sentimental win by Free Bee
Free Bee may have shocked the punters when winning at odds of 40 to one at last week’s Hawke’s Bay meeting but it could not have been a more appropriate success for the mare’s connections.
The 4-year-old was bred by two of Hawke’s Bay’s most passionate thoroughbred enthusiasts, John and Lucy Scoular, along with their two children Andy Scoular and Sally Toothill.
Lucy and John Scoular hardly missed attending a Hastings race meeting but unfortunately John died in August, aged 92.
So Free Bee is now raced by Lucy along with her children and John’s estate.
Lucy was there to greet Free Bee when apprentice jockey Tayla Mitchell brought the mare back to the winner’s stall after her gutsy three-quarter length win and was almost overcome with emotion.
It was a gutsy win by the mare, who sat outside the leader for most of the 1200m Rating 75 race before taking the lead early in the home straight.
She was then put under siege by several challengers but showed great tenacity to stave them all off and stretched her neck out to hold on.
Lucy and John Scoular bred and raced horses together for more than 40 years and their biggest moment in racing came when they bred Jolly Jake, winner of five races including the Group 1 1984 New Zealand Derby (2400m).
Free Bee descends from the same family as Jolly Jake as she is out of the Volksraad mare Bizz, whose grandam was Honeypot and she was the dam of Joly Jake.
Free Bee is the sixth individual winner left by the now-deceased mare Bizz and was the resultant foal after the Scoulars won a free service to the Windsor Park Stud-based sire Rageese.
Murdoch, by Volksraad, was the first foal out of Bizz and the winner of one race while Runny Honey was the second foal and won two races, one on the flat and one over hurdles.
Bizzwinkle, a son of Rip Van Winkle, was the third of Bizz’s progeny to race and easily the most successful. The Scoulars sold him as a young horse and he won six races including the 2018 New Zealand Cup (3200m).
Vale Kieran McCarthy
Kieran McCarthy, the breeder and part-owner of the 2005-06 champion sprinter/miler of the year in Gee I Jane, died in Hawke’s Bay last week aged 71.
One of life’s most hard-working and hard-playing characters, McCarthy was farewelled by hundreds of family and friends at a service in Hastings on Wednesday.
McCarthy had many jobs during his life, ranging from a freezing worker to owning his own trucking business and finally spending most of his later years managing farms.
He always had a passion for thoroughbred racing and bred and raced several mediocre performers before he leased the mare Miss Distinction and mated her with Jahafil.
The resultant foal was Gee I Jane, a mare that started from humble beginnings by winning a 1200m maiden race at Hawera in September 2004 but progressed quickly to become one of the country’s best gallopers during the late 2000s.
Gee I Jane had 35 starts for six wins, seven seconds and five thirds and amassed more than $882,000 in stakemoney.
The Jahafil mare recorded two Group 1 wins in 2006, the Telegraph Handicap (1200m) at Trentham and BTC Cup (1200m) in Brisbane but also went within centimetres of adding other elite-level victories.
She was runner-up in three consecutive Group 1 Railway Handicaps at Ellerslie from 2005 to 2007, beaten by a head and half a head on the first two occasions, and also finished second in the 2006 Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap (1400m) in Brisbane and third in the Group 1 Waikato Draught Sprint (1400m) at Te Rapa.
McCarthy also bred and co-raced The Silence Sir from Miss Distinction and, although he was the winner of nine races and twice in Queensland, he never reached the same heights as his older half-sister.
McCarthy raced Gee I Jane with his close friend Lance Mackie, son of former top jockey Cleve Mackie.
The mare was trained by the then Cambridge-based Neville Couchman and provided them with many highs and trips, none more so than when she went to the 2006 Queensland winter carnival.
The mare had already won the Group 1 Telegraph at Trentham and twice finished second in the Group 1 Railway Handicap at Ellerslie but was written off by the Australian press and racing fraternity from the time she arrived in Brisbane a week before the race.
“The Aussies had been telling us all week that our sprinters are three or four lengths inferior to theirs but we showed them,” Mackie said when contacted the day after the BTC Cup win.
Gee I Jane did look a forlorn hope when near the tail of the field, and bottled up down on the inside, rounding the home turn in the 1200m feature.
But Australian jockey Scott Seamer somehow secured a passage along the rails with the mare and she flashed home to snatch a short neck victory over Daunting Lad.
McCarthy and Mackie were regarded by the Australian press then as a couple of Kiwi knockabouts but they were suddenly folklore heroes after that win.
Working as a racing journalist for the local Hawke’s Bay newspaper at the time I rang McCarthy the following day to congratulate him and Mackie for their success and he was remarkably bright after what had obviously been a huge night of celebrating.
McCarthy’s son Clint, who lived on the Gold Coast, had made the trip up to Brisbane to witness the race and, along with other friends and winning jockey Scott Seamer, they had gone out for a celebration dinner on the Saturday night.
“We were pretty quiet there but then when we got back to where we were staying Lance and I polished off a bottle of rum,” McCarthy said.
“To win like she did gives you just a great feeling.
“We probably saw her at her best and it is something you cherish for life.
“Lance is over the moon and it’s great that my son and some of our friends over here were able to enjoy the win with us. It is what racing is all about.”
